


Been Working on a Jailbreak

by Nevcolleil



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Prison, M/M, Mac is his "Can Opener" alias, Prison AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 14:45:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14896542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nevcolleil/pseuds/Nevcolleil
Summary: In a world where Jack Dalton never met Angus MacGyver, he's the one the DXS sends undercover into a maximum security prison with the notorious El Noche.That's where Jack meets Frank Morris.





	Been Working on a Jailbreak

**Author's Note:**

> This is a really strange idea I got back right after this episode aired, and I've been writing bits and pieces of it over time. I've seen so much more of the characters since then... I don't know if this still works as well as I had thought it might back then. But I like the overall idea too much to just forget about it :p
> 
> In this fic, it's as the summary says - Mac actually is who he pretended to be in the Season 1 episode "Can Opener". (Which - trust me - won't end up making as much of a difference as it may seem to just now.) He enters the same prison as an undercover Jack Dalton at the same time.
> 
> And even in an AU where Mac isn't nominally Mac - Mac and Jack are still meant to be :p
> 
> I actually think this could work as a standalone - You can guess the rest from here - but I do have more ideas so I will continue this.

They rode in on the same bus, and they got processed in the same group. Jack and the tall kid, that is - the blond tall enough to stand out, with a face that does some standing out of its own.

“Who’s the blondie?” Jack finds himself muttering to his nonexistent comm, before he remembers.

They decided that this mission he had to go in clean. No weapons. No comms. Just a fool-proof alias as Jack Deacon, all around bad guy (and bag of fun - if you aren’t the one whose head he’s busting in on the dime of the highest-paying heavy.) 

Deacon reportedly slipped out of the last prison the state slipped him into, giving Jack the perfect in with their target, Joaquin Sancola. (A notorious kingpin whose friends and enemies call him ‘El Noche’.) A little birdie told the DXS that El Noche is feeling some heat from a rival druglord, and that he might be looking for a man of Deacon’s talents to get him out of prison.

So here Jack is, setting himself up to bust El Noche out of a supermax, in the hopes that once he’s home free, Sancola will lead Jack to _his_ home in South America, the headquarters for the Merida drug cartel.

It’s gonna be a risky mission. Jack is going to have to put himself out there to catch the eye of a guy like Sancola, and a lot more to actually earn the man’s trust - hence the ‘no comms’ rule. If Sancola spots one of those on Jack it’s game over. 

Jack’s in this thing blind and mute, trusting Riley to be on the other side of every digital key pad, security camera, and electronic door standing between him and mission success. He’s virtually alone behind prison walls - not even the warden knows who Jack really is and what he’s doing here.

And of course he finds a way to get himself noticed by the lovely guards who are going to be on his ass in here for the duration, thinking he’s a scumbag with a history of homicide and prisonbreaks.

“Eyes forward, convinct,” one guard barks suddenly, giving Jack a shove, which causes several immediate, unfortunate effects.

For one, the guard’s reprimand catches the kid’s attention. And he’s got fast reflexes. His gaze zeroes in on the source of the commotion before Jack can avert his, and the kid hides his reciprocal reaction well - his eyes dart away. There’s no change in expression on his face. But Jack sees his shoulders stiffen, his adam’s apple bob. Now the kid knows that Jack was staring at him, and Jack’s pretty sure the poor guy’s formed some misconceptions about why that is.

Second, Jack has maybe - perhaps - been a little... on edge since Moscow. That was a pretty close one. (Fucking ancient Soviet warheads.) He’s not used to being in a room full of criminals and being the one an officer of the law might possibly single out.

The guard shoves him... and Jack responds accordingly.

Jack shouldn’t have responded accordingly.

He spends his first night in prison in solitary, sure that Riley is somewhere freaking out on his behalf (poor darlin’ - he’s gonna owe her big when he gets out of here, for scaring her like this). And equally sure that Patty is cursing him in her sleep, or making evil eyes at her security footage of him. Whatever Patty does when Jack’s not around to receive the scornful reprimand she’d like to give him.

One day in, Jack’s gotten himself even _more_ locked up than he’s supposed to be, and he misses the team so bad he’s thinking about _Thornton's_ persnicketiness fondly.

It’s going to be one hell of a long mission.

 

As it turns out, assaulting a guard in processing isn’t such an usual thing for a supposed scumbag like himself to do around Bishop Correctional. (Now, isn’t _that_ a cheerful thought?) So his first night in solitary is the only night Jack has to spend, thus far.

And yet, when he steps out into the yard, and his eyes involuntarilly draw again to the pretty boy Jack had first spotted on the bus, Jack sees something that makes his stomach drop.

The kid’s already made some friends.

He’s sitting alone, at the far end of the small enclosure, on a rickety-looking old picnic table, set so squarely in the sunniest spot in the yard that no one else seems interested in challenging his sole dominion over the space. It’s not too hot outside for California, for this time of year, but it’s certainly not cool.

He's got a black eye, a busted lip, and a bruise on the left side of his jaw.

And it’s a bad idea to go over there. It’s such a bad idea that Jack can hardly believe he’s doing it. This kid is _not_ Jack’s mission. But Sancola’s looking agitated where he sits, surrounded by a bunch of jabbering lackeys, nearer the prison yard’s one basketball court. There’ll be no approaching him right now.

And Jack can’t really help himself. 

He’s halfway to the kid’s table before he even consciously decides to try and start a conversation anyway.

“I see you’re enjoying the honeymoon phase here at Bishop about as well as I am,” Jack says by way of a greeting. He rubs at the cut above his right eye and smirks. “Guards take issue with you too? Or was it one of our fine fellow inmates that gave you that there shiner?”

The kid’s sitting so still - he didn’t flinch when Jack started speaking to him; he doesn’t move as Jack walks closer - that at first Jack thought he just wasn’t paying attention. A tendency to zone out would help explain how the kid got himself banged up so quickly (not that he needs an explanation, with a face like that in a place like this.)

But the dude seemed plenty aware of his surroundings back at processing, and when Jack looks closer he sees the same tension in the kid’s shoulders and face that he’d seen after the kid caught him staring. Assuming the guy isn’t this tightly strung all the goddamned time, he probably started getting uptight as soon as he saw Jack enter the yard, before Jack even spotted him. 

Jack stops where he is, within easy speaking distance, but well outside of what could be considered the kid’s personal space. He keeps his body language loose and non-threatening and throws a glance back over his shoulder.

Sure enough, from where he’s sitting, the kid must have seen Jack come through the inmate entrance to the yard. From where he’s sitting, he can probably see _everyone_ coming and going throughout the yard better than he could from any other vantage point. 

Jack’s pleased. The kid _is_ as smart as he is pretty.

Unfortunately, that means he’s also twice as tense when Jack turns back around. Jack has to school himself not to put up his hands and sigh. Jack is _literally_ the one bastard in this whole joint that the kid doesn’t have to watch his back around, and Jack’s done got him counting exits and redistributing his body weight while seated.

“I’m not interested,” the kid says before Jack can say anything else to try and put him at ease.

“Excuse me?”

The kid’s got a strong, moderately deep voice. Midwestern accent. He sounds casual. Confident. But he’s looking just a little to the left of Jack instead of right at him; shoulders tense, yeah, but rounded - elbows on his knees instead of his back straight like it had been when Jack first started over this way.

Classic ‘ _If I don’t look at it... maybe it won’t bite me_ ’ posturing.

He talks a good game, though, despite his obvious certainty that Jack is gonna blow up on him at any minute.

“Whatever advice... or favor, or commiseration, you came over here to offer? I’m not interested. Thanks anyway, but I pass.”

It’s a pretty fair response, actually. 

Jack probably _should_ throw his hands up now and give the kid a friendly ‘ _My bad, broheme_ ’ and be on his way.

“Maybe I’m not hip to all the lingo these days...,” Jack says, “but I’m pretty sure nothing I just said was offering you anything.”

He was _going_ to offer to kick the shit out of whichever a-hole laid into the kid. In a roundabout way. A way the guy could accept Jack’s help without feeling like he owed Jack something in return.

But maybe that ship had already sailed. 

“You look like maybe you’ve been having a rough time of things,” Jack says before he can think better of it. “So. You know. I figured someone oughta check in on you. Make sure you’re alright. Just being friendly, mind. I didn’t expect-”

The kid laughs out loud. 

It’s a sharp sound, that makes Jack feel a little bit like one of Thornton’s long stares always do. Or would, if it didn’t also sound so tired... Sorta bitter and sad. Like maybe the kid’s been in the position of making a sound like that one time too many lately.

“ _Friendly_. Right,” he says flatly, and Jack tries not to wince at what he _just_ realizes he had probably implied. 

“Look, I may be new to _this_ prison...," the kid adds, finally looking at Jack directly. His blue eyes narrow. “But I’m no “fish.” I know what having a ‘friend’ _checking in_ costs in these places. And. I’m. _Not_ interested.”

Well. At least the kid _is_ looking at him. Better Jack focus on that than on the rather embarrassing circumstance of his having sorta, accidentally propositioned a man in prison.

“Okay, wait. That’s not what I-”

“I don’t want any trouble,” the kid is still saying, straightening his back. “But that’s just not me. Understand? As long as I have any say in it - _any_ say, whatsoever - that’s never going to _be_ me.”

And- Oh. There it is. That... _something_ that’s been at the back of Jack’s brain since he first spotted this guy. Inconspicuously nudging the seat in front of his on the bus, with his knees, until the old geezer in the seat in front of him stopped writhing and grunting every time the bus hit a bump - like a loose spring had been getting him good in the back before the kid had somehow fixed the problem.

There’s a little hint of Riley in this kid, that Jack must have instinctually picked up on in that moment. Her in-your-face defiance, walking hand-in-hand with a fierce personal code. And underneath it all a vulnerability that just about breaks Jack’s heart when he can’t do nothing to protect it.

Jack never expected to find that particular combination of qualities in another person, much less one he realizes - now that the kid’s got him involuntarily thinking about it - that Jack’s first impression is anything but _fatherly_ towards.

That inconvenient fact aside, Jack can tell that the kid’s coming up quick on some sort of breaking point Jack has unknowingly triggered. This isn’t his first time in prison, the kid said. Jesus. What did a guy who worried about the comfort of an old stranger riding the same bus as him into a supermax _do_ to get himself sent to prison more than once? Or at all, for that matter. The kid can’t be much closer to thirty than he is to twenty... for all Jack knows, he could’ve been a fresh-faced eighteen-year-old when he first went in. What could have happened to him in that time?

What _couldn’t_ have?

“ _That_ is exactly the attitude you gotta have in here, hoss,” Jack says firmly, pointing. He inadvertently scares the kid a little, with the fast movement - the kid tries, but fails, to hide his flinch. Jack goes ahead and feels bad about that on top of everything else. “No, I mean it. I really did just come over here to make sure you’re alright. But I dig the caution, brother. That’s how you gotta be in here, to keep yourself safe. You don’t let nobody sugar talk or strong arm you into doing anything that you don’t want to. You know. Besides the usual, obeying the laws of the prison system stuff.”

Sweet Jesus, he must sound like a real idiot, but it wouldn’t sit right with Jack, just turning and walking away with the kid still looking that close to fight or flight. And on _Jack’s_ account? No, sir. 

And the rambling seems to do the trick. The kid blinks, like he’s suddenly not sure they’re still having the same conversation. 

“O- Okay...” he says blankly, eyes narrowing again, but this time in confusion.

“I’m gonna give you your peace now and be on my way,” Jack promises. “I’m just saying. You ever need anything - anything, kid, I mean it. You can come to me. 

“ _Or not_ ,” Jack is sure to clarify before the kid can tense up again. “You don’t have to come to me for anything... But if you did, there wouldn’t be any “cost”. I’m not that kind of hombre, capiche?”

The kid still looks skeptical, but that could be as much about what Patty calls Jack’s ‘signature conversational style’ as anything. (Super smart folks always seem to look sideways at Jack’s accent and colorful language - at least until they see him in action.)

“Um... if you say so,” the kid says, probably more because he doesn’t know _what_ else to say than anything.

Jack nods and turns. But he’s only taken a handful of steps before the kid’s curiosity apparently wins out over his caution.

“Who the hell are you?” he says, just loud enough that Jack could maybe not have heard him.

Jack stops just long enough to look over his shoulder. “Jack. Jack Deacon. You got a name, kid?”

“Frank,” the kid says, then looks put out at himself for it. But he just sighs and soldiers on, and for the first time since he first laid eyes on Jack, he doesn’t look strung tight as a piano string in Jack’s presence. “Frank Morris.”

Jack grins. “Frankie,” he repeats and nods. “You take care of yourself, you hear?”

The next time he’s got his back turned to the- to _Frank_ , and the dude speaks, Jack keeps walking.

“It’s _Frank_ ,” Frankie says. “Not ‘Frankie’!”

Jack doesn’t outwardly smile - not for the animals locked in here with them - but on the inside... Maybe he does a little.

 

Every day, once a day, Jack has to visit the prison infirmary to take his meds.

Jack _Deacon’s_ meds, that is. The docs back at the DXS gave Jack a whole slew of things before he went in, to counteract their effects up to as long as six weeks. (And god forbid he be in this cage for longer.)

It was Jack’s idea. A way to get him away from the cells from time to time, so that if Thornton or Riley needed to get him a message they’d have an easier time of it. (He got the idea from this tv show he used to watch, but Patty doesn’t need to know that.)

Jack doesn’t know the lab tech they sent in to pose as a prison orderly, not well, but even after just a day, Jack is ridiculously glad to talk to someone who calls him ‘sir’ instead of giving him a death stare, or looking down at him like a dirtbag.

At least he is until he hears what the techie has to say. 

“Aw, hell naw. I came all this way!” Jack grouses, as loud as he dares with the prison doctor just in the other room. “We ain’t never gonna get another opportunity like this one, and Patty knows it.”

The techie - _Kevin_ , he said - looks scandalized, either by Jack’s volume, his direct refusal to follow orders, or his calling ‘Direction Thornton’ _Patty_ ; it’s hard to tell. 

“Director Thornton understands that, sir,” Kevin says, which makes Jack change his mind. There’s far too many formalities around the DXS as it is. “But without access to the prison’s security systems, Miss Davis can’t facilitate the extraction as planned.”

“Guess I’m just gonna have to go _off-plan_ then, ain’t I, Kevin?” Jack did this job for years before he finally got the chance to bring Riley in. He’ll figure out something. And if he can’t, then DXS can pull him back in - the least he can do is _try_.

“And it’s Jack, you hear me?” Jack commands. “Just tell Riley I need someone to get me into Sancola’s work detail. I was gonna need a couple of weeks to get on the guy’s goodside, anyhow. If I haven’t figured out something by then, and she still can’t get into the system, then y’all can pull me.”

“Yes, s- Yes, Jack.”

Jack feels pretty good giving orders, instead of having them barked at him or announced through a bullhorn. 

If this all goes sideways, Patty’ll no doubt have his hide for it when it’s all over - but if it _doesn’t_. Well, who knows.

Maybe if Jack brings a cartel kingpin home to the DXS with him, he’ll get a ‘thank you’ for his troubles.

“Oh, and, hey... Kevin?” Jack says, on a whim. ‘Not your mission, bro... not your mission,’ a cautious little voice in his head warns. But Jack may be around Bishop for a little longer than he’d originally planned. And what would it hurt if he did some good here while he is - besides the taking down of a dangerous drug syndicate, obviously. “Can you have Riley look into something else for me while she’s at it?”

 

It must take the DXS a few days to get everything in place, because it takes that long until the guard who usually escorts Jack back to his cell after his meds instead leads Jack to the basement, where the prison laundry is done.

It’s a little anticlimactic, truth be told. 

Here secret arrangements have been made to get Jack onto El Noche’s work detail. He’s not sure how it was done; it was probably something boring - a swiped keycard here, some spreadsheet changes there. But Jack kinda likes to picture Kevin catburgling the warden’s office under cover of night. Real spy shit.

Only now he’s here on Sancola’s crew, he has direct access to his target, and Jack doesn’t dare take advantage of that just yet. 

Sancola’s gonna be anxious. If Jack promises he can break the both of them out, he’s gotta have some plan to share about how to do that, or Sancola’s gonna call his bluff. Plus, Jack’s gonna have enough stress to deal with, having to plan and execute a prison break from one of the most secure prisons in America - _without_ a Riley to rely on. Jack doesn’t need El Noche himself breathing down his neck as he does it.

So simple recon it is. Jack’s just gonna do some laundry, keep an eye on Sancola, and give the basement a little look-see, in case it - or something in it - might inspire escape-y thoughts.

Then he heads to the little storage room in the back right corner of the basement, where they store the washing powder, fabric softener, and extra laundry carts, among other things. (All unmonitored. The two guards watching this detail haven’t budged from the door since Jack got escorted in here. Though, to be fair, Jack doesn’t suppose the laundry carts are the ones the guards gotta keep from killing each other.) 

But of course the storage room isn’t unoccupied. Like an _unintentionally_ bad penny, Jack just keeps turning up on Frankie. 

The day before yesterday, Jack had made sure to hit the mess line last to give himself some inmate-watching time. He doesn’t just need an eye on Sancola, he’d realized - he needs to watch out for the rivals supposedly gearing up to take Sancola out. Jack was so busy scanning tables, sussing out each prisoner at them, that he didn’t notice until he had a tray in his hands that the last table with an open seat at it (besides the ones “belonging” to a bunch of Nazi, skinhead assholes) was the one Frankie was sitting at.

After their, more or less, amenable talk in the yard - and an uneventful encounter on the cellblock the day before - Frankie had seemed wary of Jack’s presence, but no longer visibly threatened by it. They didn’t speak to one another - Jack nodded when he set his tray down and, after a pause, the kid nodded back, then made a point of keeping his eyes on his casserole until he was ready to leave the table.

But _yesterday_ Jack thought he’d give the kid a break. Inmates at Bishop can request time in the prison library instead of in the yard, twice a week, if they’ve been good and the library’s not too busy. The day before, Jack had felt Frankie’s eyes on him half the time he’d spent shooting the breeze with an old man from the D block. So yesterday Jack figured he’d request some library time and leave the yard to Frankie. With any luck - and a little distance - Jack thought he might even ease the kid down to where he doesn’t feel the need to track Jack’s movements when they’re loose in a confined space together.

So much for that. Guess who else had requested a library day yesterday? Jack spotted him right away, standing in front of the shelves of nonfiction by the circulation desk. There’s no way the guard who’d led Jack in would walk him all the way back to the yard if he claimed he’d changed his mind, and talking about it would just catch the kid’s attention. Jack tried ducking into the fiction section and hiding there.

Bad idea. Frankie must have decided nonfiction wasn’t actually what he’d been looking for. Jack had just settled into his plan of staying hidden in these shelves, amusing himself by reading the book spines and adding ‘in my pants’ to the end of each book title in his head. So he was just standing there, leaning against the shelves, arms crossed over his chest, smirking at _A Year of Tumult_ (In My Pants), when Frankie walked up on him.

The irony was hilarious. The look on the kid’s face? Even funnier. But Jack could find humor in none of it, because Frankie’s alarm was so real, Jack could feel it from the other end of the bookcase.

To Frankie’s credit, he hadn’t lost the spine he’d showed Jack that day in the yard.

After a wide-eyed, Adam’s apple-bobbing moment, the kid got a look of determination on his face that Jack struggled not to call “cute” in his mind, and marched up to Jack’s side.

“What happened to ‘not that kind of hombre’?” he demanded in a librarian’s whisper.

 _And_ a fair approximation of Jack’s accent.

If the kid hadn’t still been worried about getting his bones jumped by Jack - although by this point, Jack couldn’t be sure if the worry was based in actual fear of the possibility, or in the indignity that Jack was going about it so _badly_ \- Jack would have smiled.

“I didn’t say I wasn’t the kind of hombre that _reads_ ,” Jack tried to deflect.

“Uh-huh. And you’re here to read what exactly?” Frankie asked.

Skeptically. Like the furthest thing from his imagination was a guy like Jack cracking a book.

Which, okay. Super smart folks and their misconceptions. But still. Insulted, Jack grabbed the first, moderately thick book he saw out of the corner of his eye. 

“I was thinking of giving this one a chance, Mr. Smartypants,” Jack said, wiggling the book. “What do you say to that?”

Jack honestly doesn’t think he could have gotten a more bewildered reaction from Frankie if he’d held up his shoe instead of a book.

The kid blinked and his face went slack. For one tiny, inexplicable moment, Jack thought Frankie might actually _laugh_.

Then the guardedness returned to his expression, even as the curiousity Jack had seen in the yard returned to Frankie’s eyes.

“I think you need to pick a story and stick to it,” Frankie said.

Jack looked at the book that he’d grabbed. 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” On the book’s bright red dust jacket, big yellow brush-strokes announced the book’s title: _I Am Watching You_. “Seriously?” Jack could only ask himself. What were the odds? 

Jack had successfully completed countless undercover operations before this one, with no blips along the way. Proximity to this kid, though, seemed to be turning Jack into some sort of blip-causing savant.

“Look, I don’t-” Frankie started, then stopped. Then he tried again. “I don’t know what... _this_ is. But you singled me out the _second_ we got here.”

“I didn’t- Okay, I can see how you’d think that,” Jack admits.

In a way, he _had_ singled the kid out. Just not the way Frankie thought.

Jack saw Frankie’s jaw clench. “I’d _just_ told Heath where he could put his offer of _friendship_ ,” the kid said, “when you showed up in the yard wanting to be ‘friendly.’”

The kid used air quotes and everything, but Jack barely noticed - carefully adding _Heath_ to the little list he always keeps in his head of ass-kickings to get around to. 

“Heath, right.”

Frankie looked at Jack differently for a moment, but Jack still can’t place how.

“Now you’re, like, everywhere. And you’re not- You don’t act like the other men in here. At least. Not around me,” Frankie said with a frown. Something about that last part seemed to bother the kid the most.

“Maybe because I’m not like the other men in here,” Jack suggested quietly. ‘This is not your mission... but what the hell,’ the voice in his head seemed to have decided. Jack would need to put himself out for Sancola, to earn the man’s respect and trust - but he could keep all that away from Frankie. (At least he hoped.) “And I think the same is true of you,” Jack said.

Frankie’s gaze seemed to sharpen at that, as he met Jack’s eyes. “Or maybe you just like playing with your food more,” he argued, “and you’re better at pretending to be something you’re not.”

Well. The kid was only half wrong. Jack opened his mouth to disagree... but he didn’t really know how.

“Just _leave me alone_ , alright?” Frankie said, somewhere between pleading and commanding. With those big blue eyes aimed at Jack... “Stop following me. Stop the- What did you call it? Southern “sugar talk”? Just _stop_... Or I’ll- I’ll do what I have to. To protect myself.”

Jack could’t begin to guess what the kid had in mind for that, but then Frankie was turning on his heel and walking away before Jack had the chance to ask.

When Frankie looks up from whatever he’s fooling with on a counter in the storage room, Jack supposes that chance has come.

“Okay... Funny story. I didn’t _actually_ mean to follow you in here,” Jack tries explaining.

Frankie doesn’t bother telling Jack he’s full of shit. He just grabs something white off of the counter behind him and lobs it in Jack’s direction.

And then all hell breaks loose.

 

Jack gets his eyes rinsed out - twice. The prison doc applies ointment and bandages to all of his cuts and scrapes; he doesn’t even need any stitches. The world looks a little funky around the edges, from whatever chemicals Frankie exposed Jack to - moving too quickly makes Jack feel funny, but the doctor said he’d sleep that off.

Jack got lucky, basically. _They_ got lucky. Anything could have happened today down in the basement.

If Jack hadn’t closed his eyelids the second before Frankie’s makeshift mace bomb hit him, he could have been _completely_ blind when the attack on El Noche went down near the washing machines.

If he hadn’t managed to get a hold on Frankie long enough to talk some sense to the kid, the punk could have walked right into the pissing contest going on between Sancola and that upstart.

If, if, if.

Frankie’s obviously never trained in how to defend himself, but he’s strong and he’s street-smart. He’d held his own next to Jack, when Jack wasn’t pushing the kid behind him (or under him, as the fight dictated - part of the fight they’d spent lying under a tumble of folding tables.)

If the kid had tried to run instead of listening to Jack - or had kept fighting Jack at the same time that they had to fight for their lives against the crew who’d come for Sancola... 

Luck. Luck alone had saved Jack’s distracted, careless ass in the basement - and it had saved Frankie’s, and that’s what really pisses Jack off.

Jack could have gotten them all killed by not spotting the signs that last night’s brawl had been about to go down. And now Frankie’s a part of everything. The men that tried to kill El Noche are going to be trying to kill him too for witnessing their attempted hit on the cartel kingpin.

Jack’s rarely felt so stupid. Which is why his head just about spins in disorientation when Kevin watches the doc step out, cautiously, then turns to Jack with a huge grin.

“Director Thornton said to tell you what a good job you’ve been doing, s- Jack,” Kevin practically gushes. “The one convict in the whole prison who could get this mission back on track, and you found him so _fast_ -”

“Hey, hey, hey... Hold up there, Kev,” Jack interrupts, before the guy can drag him any further into bizarro world. “What are we talking about right now?”

Kevin just spits the words out, like he doesn’t hear anything startling in them and doesn’t expect Jack to either. “Frank Morris? The engineer who robbed a bank and broke out of the prison, they sent him to” Kevin says. “ _His real life is like your alibi... but less violent. And better! Apparently, the vault they were using at the bank he robbed? Morris _designed_ it.”_

__

__

“ _Frankie_? Frankie’s a bank robber?” Jack repeats. “He- He broke out of a prison?”

“Well, he got caught breaking out... A guard got hurt and he turned back to help him, but yeah.” Then Kevin seems to realize what’s off about Jack’s side of this conversation. “Isn’t- Isn’t that why you wanted Riley to look into him? To see if he could help you break El Noche out?” 

Jack’s tempted to blame everything on the chemicals the kid put in that homemade mace bomb. His being high would certainly explain his having heard the words “Thornton said to tell you” and “good job” in the same sentence, but Jack has a feeling he isn’t _that _lucky.__

__“What’s Patty done?” Jack skips right ahead and asks._ _

__Kevin’s a good man. He swallows back his obvious discomfort at hearing Thornton referred to as ‘Patty’ - again - and his obvious confusion at Jack’s wary attitude._ _

__“She- She’s arranged a cell transfer, to give you better access to Morris. She says to keep pursuing that angle and to let us know if you need anything.”_ _

__Jack lets himself fall back on the examination bed he’s sitting on with a heartfelt groan._ _

__Oh... Oh, he’s going to need something, alright. Protective goggles. Maybe more. ‘Cause the kid sure ain’t gonna be happy once he gets wind of this ‘better access’ business._ _

__“Sir?”_ _

__“I’ll let you know, Kevin,” Jack says without getting up. “Just- I’ll let you know.”_ _

__

__Jack doesn’t see Frankie, Sancola, or any of the other dudes before he’s led back to his _old_ cell to collect his things - the infirmary’s got a pretty secure set-up here at Bishop Correctional, apparently._ _

__Not that that means anything, if the guards can be paid to let what happened in the basement happen - and worse._ _

__And not if Jack can get himself (or have someone get him) moved into an inmate’s cell the same night as being caught in an altercation involving that same inmate._ _

__Jack side-eyes all the bulls he passes on his way to his new accommodations, nevermind that this particular chink in Bishop Correctional’s defenses happens to be useful to him at the moment._ _

__It _is_ useful, is the most important thing. And Jack’s going to have to use it. He’s going to have to get Frankie on his side somehow. To trust Jack enough to help him bust himself _and_ the head of a drug cartel out of this prison. _ _

__Jack’s pretty sure he was better off back when he just had to earn the trust of a murderous crimelord._ _

__“Behave yourself,” one guard says when Frankie’s cell door opens, before he shoves Jack through. He even scowls at Jack, as if to warn him what will happen if he doesn’t._ _

__‘Too little too late, brother,’ is all Jack thinks, surly. For all that dude knows, Jack bought his way into this cell to rape Frankie six ways from Sunday. And a big scowl is supposed to do something about it? The way those two guards did something about Frankie being in that basement with Sancola when the bossman got ambushed?_ _

__It’s already time for lights out, and Jack is glad. He’s got a lot of work ahead of him with the kid, but he doesn’t have the energy for it tonight. Spending nearly twenty-four hours in a prison infirmary, eaten away by guilt, recovering from a life-or-death altercation with members of an angry drug cartel isn’t really a restful experience. And through a chemically-induced haze, the walk across prison Jack’s just made felt more like a stroll across the bottom of the Atlantic ocean, only longer._ _

__Jack is mad, too. He’s mad at himself, mostly. Mad at the bad dudes who had to choose _now_ to make their move on Sancola. He’s mad at Sancola. He’s even a little mad at Frankie. Not necessarily for the mace bomb - that sucked, but Jack can understand. Unfairly, Jack is mad that Frankie did a stupid thing like rob a bank to get sent here - although, what Jack had _thought_ Frankie must have done, he can’t really say. _ _

__Mostly, Jack thinks he’s just mad at the world. A good night’s sleep will get him right - assuming one of those is in the cards tonight. But Jack’s not sure when he enters Frankie’s cell._ _

__At least Frankie isn’t armed with, like, a homemade tazer or something. He’s just standing on the other side of the cell, watching with a carefully blank face. He doesn’t look surprised or angry, which means someone must have given him the heads up on these housing developments._ _

__Great. That raises the odds on ‘homemade tazer’, Jack’s certain._ _

__Soon as the bulls clear out and their cell door clangs shut, Jack takes the pre-emptive and speaks before Frankie can do something more._ _

__“Alright, Blondie. I’m sure you’ve got all kinds of things to say to me about these sleeping arrangements. Believe me. After the day I’ve spent, hunched over Doc Jones’s ancient eyewash station... I have a thing or two to say to you too.”_ _

__“Deacon-”_ _

__“ _Jack_ ,” Jack snaps, without meaning to - hating that name by now and this whole FUBAR mission. All he was supposed to do was get in here, get in with Sancola, and get out. He let himself get distracted, thinking he could help a guy who seemed like he needed it, and now he’s got the poor guy (nevermind whatever stupid choices the kid’s made; Jack knows bad eggs, and Frankie’s no bad egg) out of a frying pan and into a fire he hadn’t even known was waiting._ _

__Frankie’s mouth snaps shut, and Jack hates that too. He’s probably all shaken up about the fight - scared, however well he’s trying to hide it. And here’s Jack growling at him._ _

__“It’ll keep,” Jack says, using a tone that welcomes no argument all the same._ _

__“Now, if I got to sleep in here, I’m not gonna get rudely awakened by another one of those mace thingies, am I? Or something worse?”_ _

__“I didn’t-” The kid starts. He’s flat out staring at Jack in a way that says _Jack_ probably wouldn’t want to say too much if he was looking at Jack’s face in this moment either. “No. I don’t- I won’t disturb you. I promise.”_ _

__“Yeah. We’ll see about that.” Knowing now how wiley his reluctant rescuee is, Jack’s not betting much on his getting a good night’s sleep._ _

__He just takes it as a good sign that Frankie seems honestly contrite. If not for launching that big bag of fun at Jack’s face, then what? Maybe he’ll be busy enough this first night feeling that contrition that Jack can get in a little rest before he’s gotta convince the kid that he really isn’t planning something Frankie needs to make himself some weapons to combat._ _

__“In the meantime, get some sleep, kid. Tomorrow is gonna be a _whole_ lotta fun,” Jack adds, in lieu of a goodnight, with his most sarcastic smirk. Figuring out how the two of them are gonna handle the _six_ guys who were in that basement, when they get out of solitary, on top of everything else is gonna be anything but fun._ _

__Jack tosses himself onto the bottom cot in the bunks on the far wall of the cell and tries to get comfortable, not closing his eyes until he hears (and sees, through the slit he’s left his eyelids open) Frankie crawl into the top bunk._ _

__

__Jack’s not a big fan of dreams._ _

__He always dies in his, which is one thing. Hard to enjoy them then._ _

__For another, Jack just doesn’t like the feeling that he’s getting bad intel, which is what being in a dream _is_ basically. He doesn’t like the feeling that he isn’t where he thought he was, or things aren’t as he was told they’d be._ _

__Who does, right? Only Jack _really_ doesn’t like it. _ _

__He’s having what feels like a most excellent dream... Strong hands where he likes them on his body best. A warm wet mouth hovering over his hard cock. Jack imagines telling that mouth to wrap its pretty lips around him and make him feel good. He imagines pretty blue eyes, a shaky hand unbuttoning the buttons on his prison jumper-_ _

__Then he hears a cot spring squeak, feels that there’s a body in his bunk besides his own, hovering over his, and Jack realizes he’s awake._ _

__Frankie makes this little choked-off sound, and Jack opens his eyes._ _

__“Didn’t I say I didn’t want a rude awakening?” he’s already rasping out, in his sleep voice._ _

__Jack’s got one hand locked tight around Frankie’s throat, where Frankie kneels between Jack’s legs and at the foot of his cot. He claws at Jack’s hands, and Jack immediately lets him go._ _

__While Frankie coughs, gets his breath back, Jack blinks fully back to consciousness and takes in the scene that’s there to greet him._ _

__“Wha- Did you- _Are you out of your_ goddamned _mind_ , Frank?” he finally pushes past his shock-numb lips. “What the _hell_ is going on here?”_ _

__“I’m doing _what you told me to do_!” Frankie half wheezes out, half speaks, as he gets his voice back._ _

__He’s got the buttons on Jack’s jumper undone almost down to his waist._ _

__“What I- Exactly when do you think I _told you_ to undress me in my sleep, kid?” Jack can only ask, clutching at the two sides of the front of his jumper like a scandalized old woman - nevermind the undershirt he has on. Jack’s voice is also higher than he’d like, not that Frankie looks like he’s going to make fun of him for it._ _

__Actually, too late Jack realizes how Frankie _does_ look. Or rather, where Jack’s seen that blank look that’s been in Frank’s eyes since Jack got to his cell. _ _

__The kid wasn’t being cagey or brave when he met Jack’s admission to his cell without expression or complaint. He’s in a panic. It’s not just the lighting in this cell making him look washed out - he’s pale. The shaking hands from Jack’s dream hadn’t been a dream - Jack can practically see Frankie vibrating._ _

__The dream. Jack had dreamt, too, of telling someone (who’s he kidding? Jack had dreamt of telling _Frankie_ ) to suck him off._ _

__

__“Frankie-”_ _

__“I don’t-”_ _

__The kid talks over Jack, but he barely says a word before he’s stumbling off of Jack’s cot and towards the other side of the cell._ _

__At first Jack thinks he’s just putting some distance between the two of them - which Jack is every kind of supportive of, with how riled up the poor guy is. But then Frankie drops to his knees by the pot, and vomits up what little there could possibly be in him to vomit. They’d both missed the evening meal while they were in the infirmary._ _

__“Aw, hell... Frankie. You don’t have to-” Jack starts, before he reconsiders._ _

__The kid kinda _does_ have to panic, doesn’t he? He’s a civilian. A civilian who’s been in a prison before, yes, but - come to think of it - Jack doubts he was sent to a prison quite like this one on his first go-around. Not if the judge spent even a second talking to Frankie before sentencing. _ _

__Of course, he’s got to freak. He nearly died today - he’s smart enough to have figured that out. And he’s still at least half convinced that Jack is just an old perv who’s been stalking him at Bishop since day one. As far as Frankie knows, he’s found himself surrounded by enemies - on his work detail, and even in his own cell now. And how is a civilian supposed to deal with that?_ _

__Even if the kid _had_ engineered a prisonbreak before, they couldn’t have been under these circumstances. The kid had _turned back_ during the last one to help a guard, after all. He’s not equipped to cope with all this._ _

__Not yet._ _

__That thought, as much as any other, breaks Jack’s heart anew. Damn but he’d been hoping Riley would find something in the kid’s file that proved there’d been a mistake._ _

__“Just calm down, Frankie,” Jack says, from where he’s now seated on his cot, hands raised. “Breathe, brother.”_ _

__“Stop _doing_ that!” Frankie yells at him for his trouble. With half the follow-through he’d shown Jack in the basement or the yard, or even the library, but still. As soon as the kid pushes away from the pot, he snaps at Jack. “Stop _acting_. I know what you’re doing, alright?”_ _

__“Yeah. Playing with my food. I heard,” Jack says, remembering their chat in the library. Jack gets it, but- “Not gonna pretend the circumstances aren’t super shady, but I promise that’s not what this is about, man.”_ _

__“I know what it’s about,” Frankie repeats, saying more in one mouthful than Jack thinks he’s ever heard out of him before. “I know your _type_. You can, like, _sense_ when someone’s in a vulnerable place, can’t you? And you just- You just swoop in... like you want to help me, at all. Like you care. Whatever I need, right? Someone to have my back... A sympathetic ear. Hell, just a friendly face. But all you want is for me to want what you’re offering so bad, I’ll give _anything_ so that you don’t take it away.”_ _

__Okay. Maybe the kid _had_ been in a prison as bad as Bishop before. Or else he’s met _someone_ , somewhere, who ought to _be_ in a prison as bad as Bishop._ _

__“Doesn’t sound like you’re talking about me,” Jack cuts in, before the kid can tell him anything more about ‘himself’._ _

__But he pauses when Frankie surprises him by answering back, “Dormer told me about you.”_ _

__Dormer. The guard who ‘warned’ Jack before leaving him in Frankie’s cell. Jack wants to curse out loud. There’s no telling what the guards said about him when he wasn’t around._ _

__Or. Actually there is. Jack was there when Thornton fine-tuned his alibi, constructing just the right level of bad guy for Jack to be to be able to fit in amongst the really _bad_ bad guys he was hoping to ride out of this prison with._ _

__As if he’s just reminded himself of why he was so shaken up he had puked in the first place, Frankie tenses up, looks away. “I- I felt _bad_ ,” Frankie says, “for attacking you in the basement. Right before you turned around and saved my life. For a _minute_ I thought I’d actually gotten it wrong... You could have fought your way out of that basement if you hadn’t been protecting me. So... In the infirmary, I asked the guards if you were okay.”_ _

__Frankie shudders. From leftover tension? Or with the memory of whatever, no-doubt colorful, interpretation of Jack Deacon’s file the guards oh-so-kindly shared with the kid?_ _

__“Dormer told me hurting a bunch of people probably just made you feel more at home,” Frankie tells him, a note of self-derision in his voice - like even scared sick the kid can’t let himself slide for worrying about what seems like the wrong person based on what he’s heard. “That if you got hurt a little back it wouldn’t be anything near to what you deserve for all of the pain that you’ve caused in your ‘career.’”_ _

__There’s nothing Jack can think to say to that without blowing his cover._ _

__Except- “Well, hell. If you heard all that, and you believed it, why did I wake up to you crawling into my bed just now?”_ _

__If he’d been talking in his chemically enhanced sleep, that’s one thing. But if he’d been shouting loud enough to wake the kid and draw him down out of his own cot- Jack would think that the doc would have warned him if he was that messed up._ _

__“You got yourself onto my work detail in less than a week,” Frankie says, still staring at the cell wall opposite both of them. “The day after, here you are... in my _cell _. Maybe I- I don’t know as much about being in prison as I let on... I wasn’t in the other one for very long. And it wasn’t-”___ _

____‘It wasn’t like this,’ Jack knows Frankie’s thinking - just as Jack had guessed - although the young man just swallows, looking like he might be sick again for a second._ _ _ _

____“But I get the message,” Frankie says bitterly, drudging up some steel from - hell - Jack doesn’t know where. It doesn’t seem like he’ll ever stop being impressed by this kid._ _ _ _

____“You can get to me anywhere,” Frankie interprets. “And the way you handled those guys... in the basement...” He turns his face even farther away from Jack, as if to hide whatever emotion he might be expressing there from being seen - but it’s not like Jack can’t do some interpreting himself, with the next shudder that shakes through the kid._ _ _ _

____Frankie is terrified of Jack. Which Jack tries not to take to heart, although he knows the fact is going to bug him later - once he has time to process all of this. (Jack’s not used to being feared by men who don’t deserve for something to be done to them that they ought to be afraid of, but a little part of him - the part Jack will take quietly to the grave, if he has his way - has wondered since even before Afghanistan if maybe _everyone_ ought to be afraid of the kind of guy he’s become, regardless of his noble intentions.)_ _ _ _

____Frankie only stops shaking when he seems to shake _himself_ out of his thoughts._ _ _ _

____“I know I can’t stop you from- From whatever it is you want,” Frankie admits, visibly forcing the words out of his mouth and his gaze to meet with Jack’s. “I figured, if there’s no way I can stop it from happening-”_ _ _ _

____“Then the next best thing would be it happening on your terms,” Jack says for him._ _ _ _

____“I was just going to wake you up, and-” And _offer_ himself to Jack, Jesus. Those guards really had to have done a number on him, to scare Frank to such drastic measures. “Then you started saying-”_ _ _ _

____“Yeah, I get it.” And oh does Jack ever. After a prison break in which a guard got hurt, it should have occurred to Jack that the guards at Bishop would likely be no more fond of Frankie than they are of Jack Deacon. That ‘behave yourself’ at the door was probably more for Frankie’s benefit than Jack’s - just one more way to rile the kid up. Which they’d obviously gone to great lengths to do with their ‘warnings’ in the infirmary._ _ _ _

____“Listen...” Undoing their damage is going to take some drastic measures of Jack’s own. Unthinkingly, he moves off the cot quicker than is wise, considering where Mac’s head is at._ _ _ _

____The kid flinches, obviously only holding himself still with an effort, but Jack freezes immediately. Hands up and palms out he crouches carefully nearer to Frankie, trying to telegraph and neutralize his actions as much as possible._ _ _ _

____“I am a lot of things, Frankie. Some not so nice things, I’ll cop to that,” Jack says, speaking as close to the truth as he dares. (Maybe closer than he would admit to under other circumstances.) “But I have never hurt someone if I didn’t have to."_ _ _ _

____Frankie is so completely unimpressed by that - he actually forgets to be scared stupid for a moment and gives Jack a look that tells him so._ _ _ _

____That minor victory notwithstanding, Jack continues. “No, I’m serious. In my... line of work, sometimes people get hurt, yeah. But when they do, it’s business, alright? Hurting people like _that_... That’s not my business. I’ve never done that, and I’m not gonna start with you.”_ _ _ _

____It’s not enough, though. Jack can see it in Frankie’s eyes - watching him so carefully now, even more carefully than before._ _ _ _

____The kid _wants_ to believe him. Probably has from the beginning, for some reason, if he took the time to try and warn Jack off in the library instead of letting his homemade mace be a surprise for their next encounter. But these words aren’t enough, especially after what Frankie caught Jack saying in his sleep..._ _ _ _

____Swallowing a sigh, Jack lays out another truth he’d like to pretend is based more in his cover than in himself._ _ _ _

____“Okay, so, you and me? Getting to _know one another_... like. _Intimately_. Yeah, I’d like that. Guess you could say I want it, not that I’m actually expecting it to happen.”_ _ _ _

____“Getting to ‘know one another’?” Frankie repeats, his skepticism bleeding from his gaze into his voice._ _ _ _

____“Fine. I want to sex you up,” Jack snaps. Letting the ‘you smartass’ remain silent, under the circumstances. Jack isn’t usually uncomfortable talking about sex. But then, he’s never talked about the topic with someone who’s accused him of wanting to force them into it._ _ _ _

____Jack doesn’t flaunt his attraction to any hot, young thing to catch his eye, either. Especially if he doesn’t know whether or not he’s solo in his interest. Light-hearted flirting and careful observation before making a calculated move - that’s more Jack’s style. And then, he only moves when the moment is exactly right. Romantic or exciting..._ _ _ _

____As exciting as his stay in prison has been so far, Jack’s not betting on there being a ‘right moment’ for him and Frankie. Even if the kid stopped being afraid of his motives and didn’t think he was a bad hombre, probably too old (or too male - although his speech about Jack’s “type” makes Jack uncertain about that one.)_ _ _ _

____“Doesn’t mean I don’t like you,” Jack admits. “Doesn’t mean I’d _force_ myself on you, for fuck’s sake. I’m real sorry, Frankie, that you’ve had to fend off guys like that before. Or worse. But I’m not that ‘type’. I’m not here to hurt you or to trick you...” Not really. Not in a way that isn’t to Frank’s benefit. If he helps Jack with this prisonbreak, Jack will see that he gets something good out of it, Jack promises himself right now. Jack will _ensure_ it, whatever he’s got to do to make it happen._ _ _ _

____Frankie’s starting to look a little less like he’s gonna fling himself across the cell if Jack so much as twitches in his direction, but he looks far from convinced._ _ _ _

____“Right. Then why _are_ you here?” he asks. “You really expect me to believe that you bribed or bullied your way onto my work detail... and then into my cell... because you _like_ me? With no plans to do anything about it?”_ _ _ _

____Jack’s got one more card to play. And it’s not so much a card as his prime objective, from a professional point of view. (Not that Jack doesn’t realize he shouldn’t _have_ any objectives with this kid, besides the professional...) And maybe it’s suck-ass timing to put this out there while Frankie still doesn’t trust him, but maybe Frank will never trust Jack if Jack doesn’t just get to it already._ _ _ _

____So Jack says, “Yeah, well, see, there is something I’ve been planning that I think you could help me out with... But I promise. It’s not the type of thing anyone could bribe or bully you into doing.”_ _ _ _

____And that’s how Jack finds himself propositioning a hot, young bank robber to help him bust out of a maximum security prison._ _ _ _


End file.
